


Ground Control

by SnowHeart



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, M/M, T'hy'la, Timelines, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 11:35:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8444281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowHeart/pseuds/SnowHeart
Summary: Spock is ninety one when a great-grandmother who once served as a nurse on the starship Enterprise dies in San Fransisco. 
It takes him a week to realise he is the last one.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about Vulcan lifespans or ageing. And Spock's half human anyway so...

There is a sun threatening to go supernova. If the explosion is allowed to happen, it will develop into a black hole, and destroy the Romulan homeworld. Ambassador Spock is one hundred and forty four when he is asked to stop it happening at all costs.

It has been years since he last flew a mission like this. But what does he have to loose?

He lost it all a long, long time ago, after all.

\--

 

He is a hundred and twenty one when the USS Kirk is decommissioned. He envies it. 

But Jim wanted him to live, and so he keeps on living.

\--

 

The sky is clear, clouds lifted, and even the haze of smog drifting up from the shipyard seems to have taken a night off. It is a cold winters’s night and he can feel the chill down to his bones, which shake and remind him he is a hundred and twelve, and this is not a good idea. All the same, Spock stands on the porch of the farmhouse and watches the stars.

He can name every single one and has visited more than he cares to remember. From way down here, they seem peaceful. Which is ridiculous. Stars are anything but peaceful in reality.

_“Punch it,” he says, and for a moment the stars are reflected in bright blue eyes. Or maybe it’s just the captain’s excitement sparking out of him for the whole world to see._

Yes, peaceful is the last word Spock would ever use.

\--

 

 

He is ninety one when a great-grandmother who once served as a nurse on the starship Enterprise dies in San Fransisco. 

It takes Spock a week to realise he is the last one.

\--

 

Spock barely recognises the new world spinning around him. He had spent his life at the forefront of advancing science and technology, but the Earth he now calls home isn't the same planet he knew at the Academy. The people have changed - he can’t imagine sitting on the grass and discussing linguistics with Nyota here, nor can he picture the half-formed plans he had once dreamed up of a life beyond starfleet, and two grumpy old men.

He doesn't even look like that much of an old man. Jim hadn't been lying all those years ago about Vulcans living longer than humans. He has more wrinkles, his hair is starting to grey, but he still can’t pass for old even though he is eighty and nothing is fair.

\--

 

He is seventy three when Chekov comms him. Leonard McCoy is dead.

His daughter is off planet so it is the doctor’s grandson, hardly an adult himself, who organises the funeral. Spock didn't even know he had a grandson. He stands to speak because they asked him to, and because Chekov’s eyes (no longer youthful, but still as effective at pleading) sought him out from the the other side of the church, and because, when it comes down to it, the old man had been one of the closest things Spock had ever had to a friend.

“Leonard was a good doctor,” he tells the mourners. “And a good man.”

And maybe it’s not enough, but it’s something.

\--

 

There’s a farmhouse in Iowa, five miles from a backend town and and old shipyard that is due to be demolished. Spock is seventy and someone wants to make him an ambassador, in recognition  of his lifetime of service to the new Vulcan homeworld. He nearly turns it down. These people don’t know a thing about what it means to give your life in service to something, but then he hears about the house. And he realises there is nothing more important he could imagine doing.

He flexes all his diplomatic weight, calls in every favour owed to his position, and at the end of the day he is the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth, and the proud owner of a falling down shack in the midwest.

He knows Jim hated the place. But it was part of him for better or for worse, and Spock feels like he has achieved something _real_ for the first time in forty years.

\--

 

Spock is fifty seven when the message comes from starfleet. They are launching a new flagship to honour twenty years since the end of the war, and Spock is invited to the ceremony to send of the _USS Kirk._

He sends his PADD scattering across the floor.

It lies there for 4.2 hours before another message announces itself.

_You should come._

_Dr L H McCoy_

So Spock is fifty seven when he gets on a shuttle back to the one planet he never wanted to see again, and fifty seven when his fingers brush over the back of a brand new captain’s chair on a brand new ship.

He is fifty seven when he shakes hands with Dr McCoy, and if it’s not quite forgiveness that passes between the two men, it’s damn close.

The captain is a fresh-faced young man named Scott, who looks to be barely out of the academy himself. Spock doesn't ask him if he is any relation, but it wouldn't surprise him. The universe has a habit of screwing with him, he has observed.

He just hopes the man is more experienced than his ship's namesake had been.

\--

 

There is a blond Terranian in the crowd on market day, haggling for a crate of tea. The resemblance is minimal at best, but for a moment he forgets how to breath, traitorous hope rising in his chest. Spock is forty six and it still hurts.

\--

 

Suggestions that the planet be called _New New Vulcan_ were shouted down almost immediately, thanks to Spock’s considerable relief. New Vulcan had been evacuated in the third year of the war, and his people never return to the place that had been their home for such a short time.

The new planet is eventually named _Vokau_ , which he would suspect to be some great cosmic joke, if not for the fact that Vulcans wouldn't know a joke if it kissed them. But it is the only thing resembling a home he has left now. So he goes.

No one seems to know quite how to act around him, which is both a blessing and a curse. They are all fumbling politeness and sympathetic smiles which Spock hates with a passion he can’t explain, but pretty soon he is left to his own devices.

He buys a small house on the edge of a small town and devotes himself to his work. _Always knew you were a hermit a heart_ , Jim’s voice chimes in one day. 

He ignores it.

\--

 

The Federation keep trying to honour him as a hero and Starfleet are dropping not too subtle hints that they want him as an admiral. Spock is thirty eight when he decides he wants nothing more to do with any of it.

\--

 

 

There are fifty four of them that made it. From a crew of over seven-hundred when the Enterprise set off at the start of her five year mission, little more than seven percent survived the war. Spock doesn't understand why he had to be one of them.

There are precious few he keeps in contact with. They have nothing to offer him but painful memories anyway.

\--

 

Spock is thirty six when he looks up the old earth oath that every doctor took before they are allowed to practice. There is a phrase that sticks in the back of his throat.

_Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. Above all, I must not play at God._

The doctor had already played God once when it came to Jim, a lifetime ago using the blood of a maniac, and the last thing Jim had asked his best friend to do was to do it again. That was the essence of playing God, was it not? Deciding which life to save, which to take.

He cried when he realises that, had he been Leonard McCoy, he would have made the same choice.

\--

 

“You should speak to the doctor,” Chekov says gently one day, when Spock is still thirty five and wishes he was nothing at all. The Russian is one of the only people Spock will see. He is one of the only people Spock thinks could ever understand, after all.

When Spock doesn't reply, he sighs and stands up. “I came to say goodbye. I’m going home tomorrow.”

_Home_. It takes Spock far too many seconds to work out the boy (just a boy) is talking about Earth. Moscow. His family. He’d forgotten what it was like to call somewhere like that a home. His own home had been a flash of blue eyes for longer than he could remember. He doesn't think he has a home any more.

“Live long and prosper,” he says.

“Yeah.” Chekov replies. It’s not the traditional Vulcan response, it can barely be considered a response at all, but really there is nothing more to say. 

Or so Spock thought. He is nearly at the door when Chekov turns and says “McCoy was the Keptin’s best friend. And the Keptin begged him to do what he did. Told him that Vulcans live longer than humans and that you would have to loose him one day anyway, told him a million bullshit reasons to do it. But do you know why the doctor agreed?”

Spock doesn't want to hear this. He doesn't want to hear any of it but somehow he found himself shaking his head.

“He could see that there was no way the Keptin could ever live without you.”

\--

 

The Federation honours the dead with awards and memorials and nobel speeches. 

It doesn't do Jim any good.

\--

 

There’s a metaphor here, Spock thinks bitterly. Actually there’s several but he doesn't care and metaphors were never his area. They belong to Leonard, who Spock will not see even when the doctor bags on the door and begs him to let him in. 

Leonard who as good as killed his _t’hy’la._

He will continue to blame Leonard. Spock will blame Leonard, and himself, and the whole fucking federation, because it is far, far easer than blaming Jim.

Or accepting that there is no blame to cast at all, and Jim was just tired.

\--

 

He wakes up in a hospital bed somewhere and screams. There is a hole somewhere inside of him, a raging tear right through his heart. He thinks he sees a golden threat hanging loose, tattered and frayed, and then someone plunges something into his neck and it is dark again.

\--

 

Spock is thirty five when Jim Kirk dies.

\--

 

They’re the bait. Spock should have guessed it, somehow, but Jim’s determination that the plan would work makes him believe that, impossibly, he might be right.

In a way, he is. If the plan is successful, the Federation (or what’s left of it) will win the war and all this will finally end. That is all Spock has wanted for a long time, for it all to end. And it’s all Jim wants now. Which is why he is willing to lie to them all, right up until it’s too late for the crew to talk him out of it. 

“Captain, we cannot win this,” Spock warns, as they stand on the bridge of their borrowed ship and take in the sight of half a bloody armada of Klingon war ships in their path.

“I know.” Jim replies. “We were never going to. Which is why I need you all to leave, now.”

Spock blinks. “You knew this was a trap.”

“The Klingons going to enjoy blowing us to bits. The great James Kirk, finally defeated. They’re going to take their time destroying the ship in the most painful way possible. They won’t even see the rest of the fleet coming until it’s too late.” He rattles of the words in a monotone, as if they are the facts of a long past star battle he was forced to memorise at the academy, instead of his own very real death.

“You wish to stay behind to give the crew a chance to get away,” Spock realises in cold horror.

“I can fire phasers from here, make the Klingons think we’re still fighting. But Spock…?” Jim finally looks at him, and there is nothing but fatigue in his eyes. “You need to leave.”

“Out of the question.”

“Don’t make me pull rank.”

“To borrow one of your favourite phrases, fuck that.” Despite the increasing likelihood that they are all going to be dead within minutes, the bridge falls silent. Apparently they've never heard a Vulcan swear before, at least not in English. “Fuck your rank, fuck your orders, and fuck you. I’m not leaving.”

Jim rises from the captain’s chair so they are facing each other, and gently takes Spock’s cheek in his hand. The kiss is chaste, and over before Spock can even register it happening, but Jim only smiles. “It’s okay, really. This is it for me, Spock. Going down with the ship and all that. Guess it’s always been in the cards.”

Spock shivers. _Pike. His father. You will not die like that._

His eyes find McCoy’s over Jim’s shoulders. Understanding passes instantly, and Leonard nods, once. This is what they agreed this morning. He hopes Jim will forgive his best friend when this is all over.

The captain is trained in every form of advanced combat starfleet ever offered, and has the quickest reflexes on the ship. But he had never been able to get one up on his doctor. McCoy moves faster than Spock would have thought possible and plunges the hypo into Jim’s neck with a soft hiss as it decompresses. Jim’s hands fly to the instrument, realisation dawning, his last expression before he slumps forward is utter betrayal. 

“Get him out of here. And then get everyone else off this ship.” Spock says, and the crew jumps into action. No one says a word about the mutiny they just saw. These are old hands at war now, every one of them, and they understand immediately what Spock is trying to do. 

Spock doesn't look at Jim’s limp body as Chekov and an ensign carry him off the bridge. He knows if he looks at him, he won’t be able to do this. It’s not a goodbye but they don’t need one. Their love has had too many goodbyes to count. The room clears until it is just him and McCoy, who looks as if he can’t believe what he has just done. It is understandable the man is apprehensive - he will be the one to have to face Jim tomorrow.

“Thank you,” Spock says, placing a hand on his shoulder, hoping the touch will convey all he cannot with words. “Jim will understand. And he is going to need you.”

“No Spock, he really isn’t.”

Spock whirls around in shock, because it was not Leonard who has spoken. Jim walks back onto the bridge, and Spock has just enough time to think _McCoy_ and _fake hypo_ and _knows me too well_ before there is a sharp pain in his own neck, and a moment later he is pretty sure he 

is lying on the floor. It’s hard to tell, what with the darkness rushing in to fill his vision.

“I love you so much,” a voice says, and it sounds like Jim’s but it’s too far away to be sure. “You know that, right?”

\--

 

If McCoy is surprised to find Spock outside his room at dawn, he doesn't show it. There is an hour before they need to board the shuttle.

“What do you need?” he asks, failing to conceal a yawn.

“I need you to do something for me. Something for Jim.”

A pause. And then, “Anything.”

\--

 

The night before the (final) mission, Jim takes his hand and leads him to bed, something he has not done in a long time. Not with such softness, such genuine love, and Spock his helpless to resist. Maybe something in him knows, even then.

When they are done, wrapped up in each other and utterly spent in every sense of the word, Jim smiles into his shoulder.

“What?”

“Did you ever imagine this would be the way your life turned out?”

The question picks at a memory, a half forgotten conversation a million years ago before war and death was the only thing they knew. A memory from a time when hope was still a thing with wings, beating in Spock’s chest in time with his heart. 

“No, Jim.” he says softly. The memory is a warm one and the body next to him is even warmer, so pulls them both a little closer. “I didn’t ever imagine it would be like this.”

“I wouldn't change it, you know. If I could go back to that bar in Iowa and tell Pike to go fuck himself, I wouldn’t.”

The bond between them flares. And it is only then that Spock realises Jim is trying to say goodbye.

\--

 

The admiralty have a plan. Spock doesn't know the details. _Doesn't need to know,_ a voice that sounds like his father (it cannot be, he died trying to evacuate civilians from Barzan II a year ago and Spock didn't even think to cry when he heard the news ) chimes in, at the same time as a voice that sounds all too much like Jim asks _why not?_

But the debate raging in Spock’s mind is redundant because he doesn't know the details of the plan, only that it involves them engaging with a small cell of Klingon ships in the Takara sector. He cannot see the logic in the plan, but he trusts Jim, and Jim comes back from the last secret meeting with command with a new single-minded drive. He believes they will end the war.

There is a fire behind his captain’s eyes that he has not seen in a long time, and even if it scares him, Spock knows he would follow that fire into hell itself.

He is thirty five, and he should have known better. 

\--

 

The platinum ring has been on Spock’s finger for five years, and they have been at war for four point one of them. It should not have been this way, and some part of him that resembles a petulant human child stamps its foot and protests that its not fair. Spock tries not to count things in those terms, instead electing to mark time by the number of times he is able to make Jim smile in one week, how many seconds takes for his husband to reply when he tells him he loves him. 

Some days Jim doesn't reply at all.

But he does smile when they get word they are going to fly again. The grin that splits across Jim’s face when he is asked to be captain could almost belong to the cadet who cheated the Kiboshi Maru test. 

The ship isn't the Enterprise. Not even close. But when Jim sits in the captain’s chair and he only pauses for a second trying to remember the helmsman’s name before telling him to punch it, Spock decides it doesn't matter. 

It doesn't even matter they are flying right back into the war.

\--

 

“I’m worried about Jim,” Doctor McCoy says as Spock opens the door to him, three months before his thirty fifth birthday. They are currently staying in some starfleet outpost that is little more than an army barack, and Jim is hardly ever in the little room they have been assigned. He’s not here now, gone to a meeting or to beat up another sparring partner, Spock doesn't know. 

He wants to tell the doctor his statement is redundant, given the significant portion of his life the man has spent worrying about Jim in one way or another. In the end, he just sighs. “So am I, Leonard.”

_Doctor_ is for when they are on duty, and there is no time and no room to think of anyone except by their title, not when they could be gone at any moment. _Leonard_ is for moments like this, when he is irrationally terrified that what’s left of his crew will slip through his fingers, like the sand he cannot stop from falling through the hourglass.

They pass the bottle Leonard has brought back and forth between them. It doesn't have the intended effect of Spock, of course, but he finds the going through the motions comforting none the less, and welcomes the companionship. 

“You’ve got each other,” Leonard says some time later, voice just the wrong side of a slur. “That’s more than most of the bastards here have. That’s something.”

Spock thinks of Chekov, who still goes days without talking and had to be dragged onto an escape pod, and isn't so sure he agrees. But he nods none the less, and the doctor takes it as a sign to keep talking. “I’m doing the best I can with him, but every day it gets harder, you know. To convince yourself he’s not already broken.” 

And Spock wants to disagree, he really does. He wants to reprimand him, defend the man he loves and deny that James Kirk could ever be something so devastating as broken. But he can’t.

“You’ve got to make sure he’s okay,” Leonard says as he leaves, and Jim still hasn't re-appeared. “If I’m not around, I need to know you’ll take care of him.”

Spock frowns, because as much as Leonard has always been the pessimist, it is an uncharacteristically somber request. The confusion must be clear in his eyes because the man grimaces. “I’m just saying, the way the universe is now, you’ve gotta make sure of these things.” He gestures to the bottle they had been drinking, mostly empty now, and Spock realises with a pang that is decidedly un-vulcan, that it is from Mr Scott’s non-existent still in engineering.

\--

 

It takes three weeks for the Federation to rescue them from the planet’s surface. They are hardly a strategic priority for an army at war, after all. 

One hundred and forty crew members on board the ship, and fifty nine of them made it. The number is made up of the bridge crew, most of medical (lead to safety by a Doctor McCoy who can’t even find it in himself to look grumpy) and whoever was lucky enough to have been above deck 24 when the explosion happened.

No one from engineering.

Jim can barely look at him. The words they exchange are clipped and professional and never once does he feel like _Jim_. Spock knows Jim doesn't blame him, not really, but he is thirty four years old, and he has never felt older.

\--

 

It’s hardly a surprise when they drop out of warp straight into the gravity of a newly formed planet. The Klingon vessel they had been pursuing is long gone by the time Spock realises they cannot even save themselves.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The ship is already pushed past her limits, even with the miracles Mr Scott and the rest of engineering have managed to pull off. Jim tries to go down there once every couple of days to see what they’re doing, and tell they to keep up the good work. He too recognises that they have kept everyone alive up until this point. He loves his crew with his whole heart and Spock thinks he could love the man just for that.

But it is unsurprising that eventually the strain of a war that never seemed to end would be too much for the old ship. 

Warp core gone, blown to oblivion by being given all she had just one too many times. Spock carefully doesn't think about how he sent Mr Scott down there not ten minutes ago to try and boost the warp capabilities and catch up to the Klingon ship. It is illogical, when there are so many more lives he might not be able to save either.

The helmswoman is young and scared. Spock cannot blame her. She is the fourth pilot the Enterprise has had in the year, and she is powerless to do anything as the ship hurtles towards the planet’s surface. Engines all but destroyed in a fire that must be consuming half the lover levels, thrusters unresponsive, shields non-existent and structural integrity at little over six percent.

There is only one thing they can do.

“Jim,” he whispers, running his fingers softly over his hands. It is the first time he has not tried to shield his mind from his husband in months - this is too important to worry about what he might find there, he has to make him understand. “You have to give the order.”

Jim looks at him, blue eyes a hollow shell of the light they used to hold and he nods, once. “Abandon ship,” 

\--

 

The orders from command come, and the Enterprise goes. 

Still, the war rages on. They take lives as instructed, and loose far many to count in the process. Crew members. Friends. Whole planets, on occasion. It reminds Spock of Old Vulcan less with each world they cannot save.

His thirty third birthday passes unmarked, apart from a whispered “Happy birthday,” from Chekov which catches him by surprise. The fact that he remembered after everything… well, it makes Spock smile, something he didn't know he could still do.

Chekov doesn't remember his birthday the next year, but in fairness neither does Spock himself. It is while standing in the ruins of a city that used to home an empire that he realises he turned thirty four almost a month ago.

\--

 

Spock is still thirty two when Jim pins him to the bed, after Doctor McCoy finally orders him out of the transport room. He is thirty two, but afraid to touch the mind of his _t’hyl’a_ for fear of what he might find there. This is new, and terrifying, and he doesn't know what to do.

\--

 

“Can you been them back?”

“I am trying!” Chekov shouts, fingers flying over the console. Spock only has eyes for the screen.

It wasn't supposed to go this way. A simple reconnoissance  mission to a Klingon base on an otherwise uninhabited planet. The away team was supposed to be in and out without the enemy ever knowing they were there, armed with plans for the next attack. That hasn't happened and, somehow, they have walked into a trap.

Two of them are already dead, Spock knows that much from the fact that their tracking signals haven't moved for some time and, more importantly, the others have left them behind. Even now, Jim would never do that to one of his crew. The rest are still on the move, heading east over the planet’s barren surface with a hoard of Klingon on their heels. They won’t get far, not on foot, not if Chekov can’t beam them out. 

“Any time now!” Jim yells into his communicator as sound of phaser discharge echoes around.

“There is something blocking our transporter capabilities!” Chekov replies. “I am trying to bypass the signal!”

he knows Jim would have been able to do it, Jim who can hack anything in the entire universe. Spock knows, if he had been on the away team and Jim on the Enterprise like Spock had wanted, they would have been back by now. But Jim had insisted on going down there himself. The war hasn't taken away his self-destructive streak, it would seem.

“Not to hurry you, but I think we’re running out of time here,” Sulu’s voice cuts in over the captain’s communicator, and Chekov swallows thickly as he continues to work. Spock isn't sure when the two of them finally stopped being stupid (not that he has any right to talk in that regard) and realised the thing between them was far more than just friendship, but he was pretty sure it was the only thing keeping them going any more. War is no time for love, but he is starting to realise that for this crew, it may well be the only time.

“Chekov!” Jim shouts again, this time almost inaudible over a fresh batch of phaser fire and a second later the boy slammed his fist onto the consul with a flood of profanity in his mother tongue. The transporter pad lights up in a whirl of ions and a second later the four members of the away team are standing in front of them.

Spock’s eyes search Jim’s face in relief, then the rest of his person for signs of injury. He finds none and begins to feel the bloom of relief that just this once, the idiot has made it out okay, when he hears a strangled gasp from next to him. He follows Chekov’s horrified gaze.

Hikaru Sulu only looks faintly surprised as he looks down at his own chest, at the smouldering hole where his sternum should be. It is as if he simply doesn't understand.

“ _Oh_ ,” he whispers, and then it is only Jim’s quick reflexes that allow him to catch him before he hits the floor. Not that it matters. He’s dead before his boyfriend can cross the room to reach him. 

Spock isn't surprised that Chekov grieves. They all do, but with nothing like the pain that he must be feeling right now. Spock finds he is numb to most of it now anyway.

What does surprise him is the silence in which the grief manifests itself. He never screams, he never curses, in fact the boy hardly speaks at all after that. And Spock only sees him shed a single tear as he cradles the command insignia in his hand.

It should have been a warning, but Spock was just too blind to see it.

\--

 

Starfleet was never a military operation. They were explorers. That doesn't seem to matter much anymore, not by the time Spock turns thirty two. He is amazed to have made it even this far.

Jim signs off for combat missions and long-range targets that are effectively death sentences for their enemy, and with every signature his regret shrinks. Maybe it is the news that the _Columbus_ crashed onto a deserted planet in a ball of fire and that Admiral Pike chose to go down with her. That’s two fathers Jim has lost in the same way. 

_Not Jim_. It’s a selfish wish, not to mention illogical considering they have no way of knowing what will happen in this war. But Spock can’t help it. _You will not die like that,_ he promises silently.

\--

 

Jim has changed. It isn't difficult to see. It is painful though, to feel his own pain mingle and spark against that of his bondmate. But Jim’s is worse, there is so much guilt there, growing with every casualty they take. Spock takes his hand and gets a rush of _gone-myfault-captian-Uhurua-tellthefamilies-I’msosorry_ and prays that this will all be over soon.

It is the first time he has ever prayed. It is also the last.

\--

 

The Federation honours the dead with awards and memorials and nobel speeches. 

It doesn't do the dead any good.

\--

 

It is the first real battle of the war and it is horrifying. Spock can think of no other word for it, despite having already lost his planet and (once) the man he loves by the age of thirty one. Federation and Klingon vessels alike suffer an unthinkable casualty count before the day is over, and both sides retreat having gained less than a lightyear of space apiece. 

The battle rages around Starfleet Outpost Station 42, and all Spock can think, afterwards, is that the small space station was never of any value to anyone.

Three Federation ships are completely destroyed, and none of the nine that engaged in the battle emerge without losses. The Enterprise in not an exception.

He holds Jim as he cries, and wonders if Nyota knew her sacrifice would save the lives of everyone on board. 

\--

 

In the first weeks and months of the war, it is almost too easy to believe everything is alright. To forget the heavy duty weaponry sitting in their cargo-hold that Mr Scott signed for in a shaking hand, to forget the first reports of skirmishes that come trickling into communication with the admiralty.

The Enterprise isn't assigned to the main fleet, and Jim believes they may well escape the worst of this war. Spock pretends to agree. And for the most part, it works.

The crew is overworked and nervous but they are happy, all of them, in a way that you can only be when you know it may well be taken from you at any moment. Noyotta sings to herself as she works, Mr Sulu and Mr Chekov start a prank war of epic proportions, and Spock wonders if the two young men know yet they are in love. He doesn't think so.

It is a new normal, but it is good.

Station 42 takes that all away.

\--

 

The Federation of Planets declares all out war with the Klingon Empire on a sunny Terranian Tuesday. It is Spock’s thirty first birthday.

\--

 

Their hands ghost over each other as Jim leaves for the meeting at Starfleet HQ, a meeting so high security even Spock cannot attend, given the deterioration of the neutral zone. He hopes the gesture conveys his support, his trust, his promise that he knows exactly who James T Kirk is and will be waiting for him when he comes home.

_Home_. There’s a joke there, somewhere. Or at least there will be.

\--

 

“What does the report from the Admiralty say?”

Jim looks up from his PADD in confusion as Spock walks over to him. “How did you know I was reading the admiralty report?”

“I can think of little else that would such concentration from you for so long. You have been frowning at the same page for 35.3 minutes now.”

Jim doesn't even look surprised, but he does look weary. “It’s not looking good Spock. Six separate incidents on the edge of the neutral zone in four months… I’m not sure the Klingons are gonna back down this time.”

“You think The Federation is heading towards a full military engagement?”

“I don’t think we’re going to have much choice. Or much chance of keeping Starfleet out of it if things go bad.” He lowers his voice, unnecessary since the rest of the crew on the bridge are hard at work and it is unlikely they can hear the conversation over the low hum of machinery anyway, and says “I’m worried they’re going to ask us to fight. We’re the fleet flagship, after all.”

“You are afraid you won’t be able to order the crew into battle?”

“No. I’m afraid that I will.”

\--

 

“I love you so much,” Jim announces seemingly randomly one evening as the two of them eat a hurried meal after a double shift. All the shifts seem to be double these days. “You know that, right?”

Spock frowns, then gestures to the simple platinum rings that circle their fourth fingers. “We would have a problem if I did not. Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine.” Jim replies. I just need to remember to tell you that more often. You never know with this job.”

 --

 

There are rituals for this sort of thing back on Vulcan. Spock is thirty and ignores all of them.

For one thing, Jim is human (never mind his own highly complicated biology) and it is doubtful whether they would even work. For another, they don’t need them.

Spock doesn't need any ceremony to tell that he is meant to be with this ridiculous human for the rest of him life. He only has to close his eyes and reach out to feel the glow of _something_ , an impossible golden lifeline. They are already bonded, him and Jim, in every way that matters at least.

Doctor McCoy performs the service, and Spock will later realise that he would never see him so happy again. Not that that average observer would be able to tell he was happy - the man spends the whole grumbling about how _damned fucking disgustingly happy_ they were and _you two are gonna gang up on me forever now, aren't you?_ but to anyone who really knows him, the joy is evident.

As per Terranian tradition, Jim is allowed to marry couples abroad his ship. Spock has no idea what the Starfleet regulation is when both the captain and the first officer are unable to carry out the duty because they’re too busy being the ones actually getting married, but it doesn't matter. Having the CMO do it, followed by the whole senior crew getting inordinately drunk from liquor from the still in engineering that technically didn't exist is good enough for them. And if anyone wants to tell them it isn't a real marriage, they are more than welcome. Because Spock knows what is real.

Real is Noyotta laughing as they are showed in confetti from the cannons Mr Scott somehow managed to rig up.

Real is the feeling of Jim’s fingers wrapped around his own under the table.

Real is the flash in his eyes when they are finally alone in their quarters, the way his hands shake as he pulls away the clothes that separate them and the way Jim smiles into the corners of his lips.

And as Jim whispers his name like its the only thing in the entire universe, Spock honestly believes it is all going to be okay.

\--

 

“Did you ever imagine this would the way your life turned out?” Jim asks one night when Spock is twenty nine. They are in his quarters, bodies curling around each other on the narrow bed and fingers tangled gently on top of the sheets. He has come down from the dizzying highs of being pinned to the mattress less than an hour before, but to Spock it is these moments that are more intimate than any sex ever could be. The captain seems younger, less guarded, and willing to hang the weight that usually crushes his shoulders on the back of a chair, if only for a little while.

“I am not sure I understand the question.”

Jim shifts to look at him. “You know. You and me. Us. In charge of a starship, further from home than anyone in the federation has ever been. And together. I mean, if you told me all that back at the academy… what are the chances?”

Spock begins to calculate the statistical likelihood of everything Jim just described before realising that it was a rhetorical question (he’s getting better every day at picking up on the subtleties of human communication.) And besides, the chances that Jim would happen to him? That’s something Spock isn't sure even he could answer.

Instead he just pulls him closer, and counts down the minutes until he will have to leave.

\--

 

Spock is twenty eight when he first tells Jim he loves him.

It takes another year for him to be able to say it to his face, rather a whisper after the door closes behind his captain or a desperate plea to his motionless face in the white light of sick bay. He is that much of a coward, even then.

It only takes Jim ten seconds to say it back.

\--

 

It is a month into their five year mission when Spock works it out, over a game of chess of all things. He comes up with a name for the feeling that has spent years coiling in his stomach. It is not an emotion he could suppress, even if he was still pretending to suppress them. Because it is every emotion, all at once, impossible to define and impossible to deny.

So he doesn't try to.

\--

 

The Captain saves his life twice when he is twenty seven. The first time costs him command of his beloved ship, the second time his own life. 

Had Spock been able to see into his future, he would not have said watching Jim die on the other side of that glass was the most painful thing he could possibly imagine. But he couldn’t. And it was.

It takes thirty three days for Jim to wake up from the coma. Spock counts every second.

\--

 

He is twenty five when he watches his world crumbles into nothing. Twenty five when he wraps his fingers around Kirk’s throat on the bridge and squeezes. Later, Spock will wonder if he really might have killed him there and then with the dust of Vulcan still staining his clothes.

Most days he is glad he didn't. It’s the other days, when the loneliness is all around and the gash in his heart is as raw as ever that he isn't so sure.

He is twenty five when he watches James Kirk become captain of the Enterprise. Sulu punches the ship into warp and the captain grins at him, and it is unclear whether the glint in those blue eyes is joy, or a reflection of the stars that have become his home.

\--

 

He watches the boy (only a boy in truth, they were all so young, so bloody young and bloody proud) smirk as the simulation ends and Spock wonders at this new emotion flaring in his chest, unlike any he has suppressed before.

Is it anger at the arrogance? Curiosity at how he somehow managed to cheat the test? Fascination at the walking paradox that is the bold cadet? 

He does not know, only decides that he will make it his task to understand James Kirk. He has no idea this will take his whole life. He is only twenty four, and doesn't understand the concept of his whole life. Not yet.

\--

 

Spock draws his hands away with a gasp, and the Elder only regards him sadly. She above all others shouldn't be expressing emotion of any kind but he cannot blame her. Not if she saw even an inkling of the future that awaits him, felt even a hint of the pain he knows will fall upon his shoulders. It is her job to show the young of Vulcan what their lives might be, so that they may make decisions for their future logically and in full possession of the facts. 

But she has never seen a future so devoid of logic, and devoid of hope as this one.

“What will you do?” she asks. “You know the Vulcan Science Academy would accept you in a heartbeat. Why apply to Starfleet at all? There is no need for this future to come to pass.”

He thinks of the loss he will never be able to escape from, his whole universe imploding around a pair of ice-blue eyes. A smile that he will forever know is his, and a feeling that can only be described as _home_. And when he answers, it isn't even a decision.

_You are worth it, James Tiberius Kirk._

He is nineteen years old.


End file.
